10/28/08

One of the most publicized moments of the 2008 campaign was "Joe the Plumber" questioning Barack Obama's proposed tax plan. To his credit, Joe didn't succumb to intense media pressure when asked for whom he would vote. He replied that he, and only he, should know the answer to that question. And rightly so, since casting a ballot in private, free from fear and intimidation, is the very bedrock of our free society.

Think what it would be like without that safeguard, if no curtain were behind you. What if your neighbors, co-workers, and even your enemies knew your choices when pulling the lever? What if that vote allowed your life to become an open record, complete with your name, address, occupation and employer? Common sense tells us this system is anathema to democracy, the end of a free society. Think it can't happen here? Think again.

There's a legislative effort underway to make union organizing a public process, and it's called Card Check. If passed, it would eliminate the secret ballot currently employed in federally-supervised elections.Instead, a union would be certified as soon as it collected a majority of signed authorization cards. Private decisions would not just become public, but ones made under the watchful eye of organized labor. Based on labor's colorful past - and that's putting it mildly - of coercion, thuggery and intimidation, even the most independent and bravest of souls would be hard-pressed to oppose union leadership.

To date, the Republicans have successfully defeated Card Check, but an Obama presidency, working hand-in-hand with a Democratic Congress, would give the unions a "blank check" on Card Check. The passage of such un-American legislation must be stopped, and there is a two-word solution to do so: John McCain.

There's a new player on the business community's team in its increasingly tough battle with organized labor. The Workforce Fairness Institute was recently set up as a 501(c)(6) group with a grassroots mission to work in more than 16 states against one of the unions' top legislative goals -- the Employee Free Choice Act.

The WFI is worried that the bill, which would allow a union to be formed in a workplace without a traditional secret ballot election, will gain considerable momentum next year if the Democrats win a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. "We're out there educating the public on this issue," says Katie Packer, the executive director of WFI.-- Peter H. Stone

Packer would not identify the WFI's funders. But sources familiar with its creation speculate that such big retailers as Wal-Mart and Home Depot -- a which are high-profile opponents of EFCA -- are likely among the group's donors. One source says the WFI is trying to raise as much as $10 million for its operations.

Packer says the group has a small board that includes herself, Tom Musser, the former chairman of the National Federation of Independent Business, and Joe Scarlett, the former CEO of Tractor Supply. Packer is a partner in the Alexandria, Va. public relations firm WWP Strategies.

Union operatives will say and do anything to defeat worker-choice amendment

A former legal adviser to the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, a union opposing the so-called right-to-work measure on the November ballot, sent an e-mail to the measure's co-author using a racial slur and profanity.

DeAngelo Starnes, who until recently was an associate general counsel for the UFCW Local 7, wrote to Amendment 47 co-author Ryan Frazier in August, after Frazier had sent a mass e-mail to Starnes and dozens of others. The e-mail was about an event the Aurora city councilman sponsors to help children receive school supplies.Starnes replied to Frazier, saying, "You f------ sell-out. Why are you sending this to me?" according to an e-mail obtained by The Denver Post that was sent from Starnes' private account to Frazier's public e-mail account with Aurora. "Take me off your e-mail list, House N----."

Frazier replied: "Hey, no need for the ignorant language. We will take you off immediately. God bless you."

Starnes then replied: "Just keep bending over for the white man, alright?"

Both Frazier and Starnes are African-American.

"Certainly those are words that you don't soon forget," Frazier said. "But I'm a grown-up, and you move on and do what you have to do in life."

In an e-mail, Starnes acknowledged the reply to Frazier, saying, "It was a joke, albeit a crude one."

He said the focus should be on Amendment 47.

"Those e-mails had nothing to do with Local 7 as they were sent unsolicited to me by Mr. Frazier to my personal e-mail account," Starnes said. "I didn't mean any harm to Mr. Frazier."

Ernest Duran, president of the UFCW Local 7, said he was not aware of the e-mail. He said Starnes "recently left" the union position but would not elaborate.

"It's totally inappropriate," Duran said of the e-mail. "Any comments like that we don't condone or tolerate."

Starnes appears in a television ad paid for by Coloradans for Middle Class Relief, which opposes Amendment 47. The amendment would prohibit mandatory union fees as a condition of employment.

Frazier said he did not realize who Starnes was until he saw the commercial and recognized the name.

Julian Jay Cole, who wrote Amendment 47 with Frazier, on Monday filed a complaint with the state contending that Starnes has been practicing law without a license.

The complaint states that Starnes appeared as counsel for the union at least three times.

Starnes, who made $110,000 last year as the union's counsel, does not have a license to practice law in the state.

Starnes acknowledged he doesn't have a Colorado license, but said he was admitted to practice law in federal court. That would require he be licensed in another state. He would not say whether he has a license from another state.

He was admitted to the federal bar in U.S. District Court in Denver in July 2000. Labor cases are typically handled at that level.

Records show his law license in Washington, D.C., was suspended in 2003 for six months for making a false statement to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals Committee on Admissions.

The committee also found he failed to provide competent representation, abandoned his clients, and failed to withdraw as their counsel after he began working full time for a federal agency and could no longer shoulder his duties to his private clients.

Records do not show his license was reinstated.

Duran said he did not know that Starnes was not licensed to practice law in Colorado.

Earlier this year, a pro-union group cited certain campaign contributions to Frazier in an attack ad against Frazier and Amendment 47.

The contributions made to him were from a company that won a $10 million contract with Aurora. The entire City Council had approved the contract.

A high-profile civil RICO suit against organized labor has been settled, just as a judge was to begin hearing the case in Federal District Court in Richmond, Va.

Smithfield Foods is dropping its racketeering and extortion suit against the United Food and Commercial Workers and will agree to allow a union election at its pork processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C. In exchange, UFCW will end its corporate campaign against the company. (Raleigh News and Observer story; Associated Press.) Beyond issuing a joint statement, the two sides have been told by the judge not to comment until after the union vote, whenever that might be.Smithfield workers rejected organizing votes in 1994 and 1997, and labor has sought to make the company the blackest of its business bete noires. (Black Forest Ham?) The UFCW's corporate campaign was very aggressive, even by labor's usual standards -- alleging human rights violations, and more -- and Smithfield pushed back on all fronts. (The company estimates the corporate campaign cost it $900 million.) The suit was being closely watched for its potential precedent-setting value. Wackenhut's civil suit against the SEIU was another prominent example of business turning to RICO; more recently, CINTAS Corp. filed a RICO suit against Change to Win.

Guess we'll get our RICO precedents elsewhere.

For more background and documents, see below.

In May, Judge Robert Payne rejected the union's motion to dismiss the suit as frivolous, finding sufficient evidence to point to the union's organized effort to extort from Smithfield the right to conduct business as a non-union business. (Payne's opinion is here as a .pdf file.)

Included in the union's campaign is a website, www.smithfieldjustice.com/" (now down), and an ongoing advertising push in the D.C. area, including ads in Metro buses. (Here's a photo.)

Smithfield had never been not shy about defending itself in the PR wars, either, as you can see from its targeted website, SmithfieldFacts. More background...

An intrepid researcher has discovered more than 200 tax liens totaling more than $3.7 million have been filed by the government against the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now for unpaid taxes since the late eighties.

A tax lien is issued when a person or organization fails to pay taxes and that tax debt is considered seriously delinquent. A lien is only issued after the government makes several unsuccessful attempts to collect the debt.

The conservative-leaning Capital Research Center’s Matthew Vadum found a staggering number of liens listed against ACORN’s national headquarters at 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans, Louisiana while conducting an exhaustive investigation of ACORN's history and current activities.“I took that address and plugged it into Nexis and did a public records search for tax liens,” Vadum said. “At least 230 tax liens corresponded to ACORN’s address and they were all from ACORN’s shadowy network of affiliates.”

The liens filed against ACORN and their associated groups come from the Internal Revenue Service and government officials in fifteen different states.

75 of the 230 tax liens appear to have been “released,” meaning the full debt was paid or a negotiated payment was made for the debt. The rest are outstanding.

The "shadowy network" Vadum mentioned are the hundreds of ACORN offshoots housed at ACORN's official 1024 Elysian Fields Avenue address, such as Project Vote, ACORN Institute Inc., ACORN Housing Inc. Inc and Wal-Mart Alliance for Reform Now (WARN). One of those organizations is Citizens Consulting, Inc, which was paid nearly $800,000 by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign to conduct get-out-the-vote activities during the Democratic primary.

While CSI raked in cash from the Obama campaign the IRS was preparing nearly a million in liens against ACORN. The IRS filed a lien on ACORN for $306,407 on March 6, 2008. A different lien was filed for $547,312 against ACORN on March 10, 2008 and another was filed on March 14 for $132,997.

Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R.-Ohio)and other Republicans have called on Congress to strip ACORN of their federal funding, which has received at least $31 million in various grants since 1998, because of ACORN's role in rampant vote registration fraud across the nation, but Democrats have not expressed any interest in doing this.

“ACORN is a relentless crusader for social programs and government wealth redistribution schemes and the fact they can’t be bothered to pay taxes speaks volumes about the integrity of the organization,” Vadum said.

Change! That’s what the American people are demanding, and by most accounts, it’s what they are going to get. If Barack Obama closes the deal and takes the oath of office next January, what will our country become?

For certain, the United States of Obama will be a changed nation. George W. Bush and his Iraq war and tax cuts will soon be a distant memory. Obama promises to end the Iraq War, step up the fight in Afghanistan and “spread the wealth around.” He will likely have supermajorities of liberal Democrats to make it tough for Republicans to act as a check and balance.Here is what will be different.

Obama will see the nation’s “mission statement” as outlined in the preamble to the Constitution as a mandate to implement his brand of social and economic justice. According to the Constitution, this nation was formed to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty…”

There is no doubt that an Obama-style, liberal interpretation of these missions will translate to income redistribution, also known as socialism. Sen. Obama spoke to the NAACP back in July in a language that much of America might not understand – but this audience did. “I’ve been working my entire adult life to help build an America where economic justice is being served,” he told the group.

This is perhaps the root of what might be called “The Obama Doctrine.” Simply stated, it holds that anyone who has succeeded in life must have done so unfairly and therefore government must use its power to move some of that wealth around.

Thus, an Obamaism such as “restoring fairness to the economy” means higher taxes for people who fall into that category called “the rich.” America got a glimpse of this last week when the ultra-liberal Congressman Barney Frank suggested on CNBC that the country should start spending more money and recover the funds by taxing rich people.

But there aren’t enough rich people to soak for Barack Obama to provide tax cuts to 95 percent of the people as he has promised. According to the American Enterprise Institute, in 2006 the top 10 percent of earners paid almost 71 percent of taxes.

Lots of us will be labeled as “rich” so that we become eligible for the soaking. Besides, Obama’s tax cut plan extends to people who don’t pay taxes, so their “refund” check is really welfare. That’s wealth redistribution, and “social justice” to Obama.

And what about corporations? And unions? Under Obama, corporate taxes would likely go up and unions would be strengthened under proposed new “card check” rules for union organizing. Ford and GM cannot continue with high taxes and an extremely costly unionized workforce. So expect the American automobile industry to virtually vanish.

If the Constitution provides our national mission statement, then our “vision statement” comes from the Declaration of Independence – the Jeffersonian concept of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The nation under Obama will throw it all away.

If you Google the name of the Mexican actor Eduardo Verastegui, you will find a video that is hard to watch. In urging Hispanic voters to reject Obama, the Latino star runs footage from abortion clinics that will make you cry. And yet, Barack Obama is so pro-abortion that he helped block legislation that would have protected children who survive botched abortions.

So much for life. What about liberty and happiness? Obama’s healthcare plan, leading to a single-payer system, would take away choices and lead to rationing. We will get cap-and-trade legislation to control climate change – but that is really designed to put the government in charge of everything. And, we’ll get the “Fairness Doctrine” to throw Rush Limbaugh off the air and anyone else who might have a contrary opinion.

There will not be enough Republicans in Congress to stop any of this. So hide some money in the mattress and get ready for the United States of Obama. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

For those who claim concerns about EFCA are overblown for reasons such as Canada's policy of card check and pervasive interest arbitration in the public sector, two observations:

Yes, all Canadian provinces had card check — until 1980. Since then, most Canadian provinces have abandoned card check and have moved to secret ballot elections.Yes, many public sector employers and employees are subject to interest arbitration. But most public sector employers/employees aren't subject to the market forces that affect unregulated private sector employers/employees.

Furthermore, most non safety-related public sector employers/employees have the right to reject the arbitrator's proposed "contract."

Not so under EFCA. A government-appointed arbitrator — with no responsibility for the company's bottom line or ability to compete — will set the wages, hours , terms and conditions of employment for private sector workers in unregulated industries. It will be a brave new world.

Workers will pay a steep price for organized labor's political investment

Arthur Laffer is the economist who first postulated that higher taxes result in declining tax revenues, and lower taxes result in rising tax revenues. The American president whose policy proved that theory was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who massively reduced taxes during his first year in office, the direct result of which was a rapid increase in government revenues.

Why did this happen? Because business boomed following the tax cuts; consumers consumed more, businesses produced more and increased wages and salaries, the ranks of the employed grew, and government coffers were the great beneficiary of this widespread prosperity.Kennedy understood all this, either consciously or intuitively. But he was the last Democrat to so understand. Lyndon Johnson, who moved into the Oval Office after Dallas, never did get it. Instead, he instituted a gunsand-butter policy (escalating the Vietnam War at the same time he announced the Great Society, a welfare-based attack on America at a cost of billions), and the results were devastating. His only lasting contribution to the public good was the successful passage of historic Civil Rights legislation. That wouldn't have been possible without the support of Republicans in Congress.

Richard Nixon never got it, nor did Gerald Ford or Bush I. Ronald Reagan did, and lowered taxes because of his understanding. And so did George W. Bush, leading to the boom which ended only because liberals in Congress - Barney Frank and Chris Dodd most significantly - colluded with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to push for subprime mortgages, and we all know what happened when the recipients of such largesse couldn't afford the payments.

While it's true that Bill Clinton lowered taxes - which led directly to the boom in the latter years of his administration - he did so only because he was forced to by Newt Gingrich's "Contract With America" campaign, which gave Republicans the majority in both the House and the Senate.

Clinton, faced with those majorities, agreed to the cuts. Let's not even mention Jimmy Carter, who understood economics about as well as he understood America - which is not at all.

Comes now Barack Obama, as liberal as any person to ever seek the presidency. Compared with Mr. Obama, LBJ looks like a moderate, and JFK a flaming right-winger.

Among other things, as Rep. Buck McKeon, one of the Victor Valley's congressmen, told us, if Mr. Obama wins, the first thing he'll do is approve legislation making "card check" law. Card check, for those who follow such arcane matters, would eliminate the secret ballot in elections over unionization of a workplace. All unions would have to do - and they can't wait for this - is coerce 50 percent of the employees of a business to sign a card saying they support unionization, and an election on the question is dispensed with. How's that for democracy? Suits Mr. Obama just fine, apparently.

And then there's welfare, which is what at bottom is Mr. Obama's plan for taxation. While he claims he would cut taxes for "95 percent" of American taxpayers, more than 40 percent of Americans don't pay taxes now. How will he "cut" their taxes? By sending them a "rebate" check.

That's what he meant when he said he'd like to spread the wealth to Joe the Plumber.

Which gets us back to Mr. Laffer. The other day, Mr. Laffer appeared on one of the Talking Heads television shows (we forget which one; at this point they're all running together), and, asked what was wrong with Mr. Obama's economic plan, said, "If you tax people who work, and give it to people who don't, pretty soon you're going to have an awful lot of people who don't work." No kidding.

Estimates are that if all of Mr. Obama's programs are enacted - national health care, revisions in Social Security, expanded Medicaid elegability, etc., etc., etc., the total cost would be $4.3 trillion. Trillion! Can the American economy, and American taxpayers, afford it? Of course not.

Socialism ain't cheap. Ask any European worker (who pays for Europe's non-workers, which are getting more plentiful by the minute).

About two dozen health-care workers rallied Monday in Manhattan Beach, demanding their national union leaders allow them to elect local leaders and return misused union dues. "They are supposed to be helping us, not keeping us in the dark," said Stephen Sherman, 88, a longtime member of Local 6434 of the Service Employees International Union.

The workers gathered in front of the Marriott Hotel on Rosecrans Avenue, the site of a disciplinary hearing into the actions of Tyrone Freeman, former president of Local 6434. Freeman, recently removed from office, has been charged with several counts of using union money for personal purposes.The workers allege that they are being kept in the dark by the national leadership of SEIU, which placed the local chapter into a trusteeship until the disciplinary matter is resolved.

"All members of Local 6434 were sent a letter detailing exactly what's taking place," said Michelle Ringuette, spokeswoman for SEIU in Washington, D.C. "We are very careful to respect the due process rights of all of our leaders and elected officers, and members."

The SEIU and its California affiliates, including United Health Care Workers-West and Local 6434, have been embroiled in a tense tug of war over leadership for the past several months. The national group wants to consolidate long-term health-care workers into one local, while some members of the California chapters want to remain separate.

TheAdvertisementwidely reported allegations against Freeman have added another layer of tension. The national union claims, among other things, that he diverted $600,000 in union dues to a company owned by his wife without proper disclosure.

Those who protested in Manhattan Beach said Freeman is a scapegoat for the national union, which deserves equal share of the blame for the mismanagement.

"We want the truth," said Raquel Torivio, a union member who flew to the South Bay from Monterey to participate in the rally. "The real problem is with the national leadership."

At one point, a contingent of Freeman supporters - wearing Local 6434 T-shirts and buttons - showed up to the rally, loudly asserting that the demonstrators weren't actual members of Local 6434, but rather United Health Care Workers-West.

The demonstrators disputed that claim.

National leaders say if Freeman is found guilty of the charges, the members of Local 6434 will be entitled to a democratic vote for new leadership.

SEIU's political action committee, SEIU Committee on Political Education, has given $13.53 million to Barack Obama's Democratic presidential campaign and another $3.16 million to oppose Republican John McCain's campaign, according to federal disclosure reports.

Meanwhile, the union's national office this morning put out this press release, touting its campaign efforts on behalf of Obama.Money collected from union dues cannot be donated to political campaigns. SEIU, like many other unions, encourages members to donate to its PAC, which is free to use that money for political purposes.

But as we reported last week, The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission that challenges the legality of a union political fundraising policy the foundation says that SEIU adopted at its summer convention.

The 4-page complaint filed today alleges that the union has set political fundraising targets for the locals and fines those that fail to meet those totals.

SEIU Local 1000 president Yvonne Walker blasted the complaint as, "a pre-election ploy by a group that is upset that workers are spending money to support candidates who support workers," and said that the foundation is "misrepresenting SEIU's political program in order to try to score political points in the media." The local represents about 95,000 state workers across several bargaining units.

Want to look more deeply into SEIU COPE's federal campaign donations?

You can read its latest Federal Election Commission disclosure form on its Obama donations by clicking here. Look for the "Candidate Year-to-Date Per Election for Office Sought" to get the latest number.

Click here for SEIU total donation to John McCain as of Oct. 15.

And you can click here for the union PAC's reports going all the way back to 1993.

Final note: We'd like to hear from SEIU members of either political persuation for a pre-election piece we're writing for this Thursday's State Worker column.

By the mid-1930s, the U.S. economy appeared to be climbing out of the Great Depression. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which had bottomed out at 41 in 1932, was advancing. It increased 73% from the beginning of 1935 through the end of 1936, when it hit 180. The number of unemployed, 13 million in 1933, dropped to 9.5 million in 1935 and 7.6 million in 1936.

Then, in 1937, the DJIA plunged 33% in what is often called "a depression within a depression." Joblessness skyrocketed.A principal factor in the meltdown that year was the U.S. Supreme Court's surprise 5-4 decision in early April to uphold the constitutionality of the Wagner Act, which had passed two years earlier. This measure, which is still the basis of our labor relations regime, authorized union officials to seek and obtain the power to act as the "exclusive" (that is, the monopoly) bargaining agent over all the front-line employees, including union nonmembers as well as members, in a unionized workplace.

As Amity Shlaes observed in her recent history of the Great Depression, "The Forgotten Man," within a few months after the Wagner Act was upheld, industrial production began to plummet and "the jobs started to disappear, with unemployment moving back to 1931 levels," even as the number of workers under union control was "growing astoundingly."

Given the reality of unions in the workplace, the law meant that efficiency and profitability were compromised, by forcing employers to equally reward their most productive and least productive employees. Therefore subsequent wage increases for some workers led to widespread job losses.

Pre-Depression-era growth and prosperity did not return to the private sector until the early 1950s, when the spread of state right-to-work laws prohibiting forced union membership and dues greatly reduced the detrimental effects of the Wagner Act.

The U.S. has just experienced another stock market crash, and Barack Obama, the candidate now favored to be the next president, is in favor of what amounts to a new Wagner Act.

If the mislabeled "Employee Free Choice Act," becomes law, it will likely have a similar effect on the economy as the original Wagner Act, transforming what could have been a recovery into a lengthy, deep recession, or worse.

The bill would greatly facilitate organization in workplaces by effectively eliminating secret ballot elections, allowing unions to become exclusive bargaining agents when a majority of the workers sign a card indicating they want a union -- before they've heard a word from their employer about the potential downside of unionization.

The cards themselves may be signed under duress. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) czar Andy Stern predicts that its enactment would cause unions to "grow by 1.5 million members a year, not just for five years but for 10 to 15 straight years."

Sen. Obama voted for one version of the card-check bill in June 2007 and pledged to Big Labor that he will push for enactment as president. With a handful of pickups he will have a filibuster-proof majority in the next Senate, and can make good his pledge.

"I owe those unions," Mr. Obama explained in his 2006 political memoir, "The Audacity of Hope." "When their leaders call, I do my best to call them back right away. I don't consider this corrupting in any way . . ."

John McCain voted against card-check legislation in 2007, and has pledged to veto such legislation as president. He also supports a national right-to-work law that would repeal all current federal labor law provisions authorizing forced union dues and fees. Unfortunately, his campaign has done little to alert the nation to the dangers of the card-check bill.

Before they cast their votes, the American people ought to be aware of Mr. Obama's commitment to the passage of a new Wagner Act, and of what the economic consequences of such a law are almost certain to be.

WFTV’s Barbara West, an Orland anchorwoman, grilled Biden on everything from his running mate’s connections to Acorn to his statement that Obama would be “tested” by an international crisis and may make decisions that don’t immediately seem like the right ones — and even quoted Karl Marx to ask how Obama would be any different from the Communist founder who favored redistributing wealth to society’s underclass.

“Is this a joke?” Biden asked after the Marxism line. “Is that a real question?” West assured him that it was.

West later asked if Obama wanted to make the United States a socialist country “like Sweden,” and whether Biden’s “tested” remarks meant that Obama’s leadership would result in the United States losing it’s status as the world’s lone superpower.

“I don’t know who’s writing your questions,” Biden replied.

The Orlando Sentinel reports that the Obama campaign pulled Biden’s wife Jill from a scheduled appearance on the station, and limited WFTV’s access to other members of the ticket.

In response, Biden spokesman David Wade said in a statement “Joe Biden welcomes tough questions every single day, and in fact he’s done over 180 interviews since he was selected as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, whereas I can count on my fingers and toes the number of interviews Gov Palin has done.”

“Every day, including today, he’ll keep doing interviews - 7 more this very Monday; and the suggestion that we’ve canceled further interviews as a result is pure malarkey,” Wade said.

“Joe Biden, however bemused by questions that seemed to channel Rush Limbaugh’s wildest fantasies, knocked that interview out of the park and has received over 200k emails congratulating him.

Biden addressed the interview at an event in North Carolina - saying it’s one more example of how “mean” the campaign has gotten.

“I was on a television station the other day doing a satellite fed to a major network in Florida, and the anchor quotes Karl Marx, and says in a sense, isn’t Barack Obama Karl Marx,” he said. “I mean, folks, this stuff you’re hearing, this stuff you’re hearing in this campaign, some of it’s pretty ugly. And some of the innuendo is pretty ugly.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, those of you who support us, when this is over if God willing we win, we have to reach out to those folks. We have to bring this country together. That’s why, that’s why I have been asking John McCain, we should end, we should end this scurrilous phone calls which lie about Barack’s record, and also question his character,” Biden said.

Parents and teachers recently listened to state Rep. Dave Steil describe the workings of a bill to end teacher strikes.

Strike-Free Education Act House Bill 1369, if passed by the state Legislature, would make strikes illegal and add several mediation steps to the bargaining process between teachers unions and school districts. If those steps still result in a stalemate, the new law ultimately would require four negotiating sessions a month until an agreement is reached. It would make each step of the process transparent to the public.Steil, R-31, plans to retire shortly. He urged listeners to ask their state representatives to support the bill.

“It happens when a mass of people get behind it and say, "We want this done,' ” he said.

The meeting last week at the Yardley Community Center and attended by about 35 people who wanted to know more about the legislation, was organized by local teacher strikes opponent Simon Campbell of Lower Makefield.

Jill Basile, the parent of a child in the Souderton School District, also spoke at the meeting.

The Souderton district was shut down recently for 13 school days during a strike. Basile's anger propelled her into action, she said. She made fliers, called the local media and is meeting with local politicians to garner more support for strike-free legislation.

Lower Makefield resident Rafe Schach thought it would be good for Pennsylvania to study the contract negotiation practices of the 37 states that already make teacher strikes illegal. Shach's children go to private school but he is interested in ending strikes, he said.

Campbell's concern with ending strikes began after Pennsbury School District teachers went on strike for 21 days during a contract dispute in 2005. He organized StopTeacherStrikes.com, a group of parents and teachers who support the strike-free bill.

“A private organization should not have the right to shut down a public learning facility,” said Campbell at the meeting.

Pennsbury teachers union vice president Michelle Marcinkus attended the first half-hour of the meeting. She said she wanted to see how many interested people would show up.

According to OneNewsNow, a lot of teachers in California are outraged that their money paid in union dues to the California Teachers Association is being used to oppose the protection of marriage in California.

The Pacific Justice Institute says CTA has spent $1.2 million opposing California's marriage protection amendment, Proposition 8. Many teachers who understand that marriage can only be between a man and a woman are angry that their union dues are being used to fund things they morally oppose.They're not sitting still for this, though.

From OneNewsNow:

Dacus also stated CTA's opposition to Prop. 8 has angered many public school teachers whose CTA membership fees have been used to fund the opposition campaign. In response, his group has launched a project called ChooseCharity.org.

"And what we are doing...is educating and defending the rights of teachers to opt completely out of their union and give all of their union dues, every single penny of it, instead...to a charity that's in agreement with their faith -- and our phone is ringing off the hook," he adds.

The Yes on 8 campaign is running a series of ads which shows in startling clarity how far this radical pro-homosexual agenda runs.

It runs not only to the freedom of homosexuals to destroy their own bodies and souls, but seeks to hijack marriage itself in their quest for legitimacy of their sexual practices. It also paints a bulls eye on the children, because activists understand that if they can indoctrinate children at a young and impressionable age to accept this immoral, unnatural and unhealthy sexual practice, they have gained a lot of mileage in avoiding societal disapproval of their behavior.

Despite the prejudicial language California Attorney General Jerry Brown used to rewrite the measure, Yes on 8's ads are cutting through the pro-homosexual propaganda and allowing average Californians what's really at stake.

Darkness is dispelled by light, and the light of truth is finally starting to shine a little in California--and the cockroaches are scrambling for cover.

Taking personal responsibility can be tough. Self-reflection is not the fondest of exercises toward self-improvement.

Such is the case with the mainstream media. Each election we routinely hear criticisms about the "biased mainstream media" and how it doesn't play fair covering the candidates who lean to the right side of the political spectrum. There have even been books written on the topic, including those from the media's own ilk (i.e. former CBS correspondent Bernie Goldberg). If the critical conservative punditry and one's own sneaky suspicions weren't enough, now there is concrete proof that the media "is" biased and has tanked this election to benefit Barack Obama.The Pew Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released a report last week. It found that while the media has covered both the Obama and McCain campaigns pretty evenly, the vast majority of "negative" coverage has - no big surprise here - focused on John McCain. The project surmised that "coverage of McCain has been heavily unfavorable - and has become more so over time. In the six weeks following the conventions through the final debate, unfavorable stories about McCain outweighed favorable ones by a factor of more than three to one - the most unfavorable of all four candidates." McCain coverage was even worse than his much-ballyhooed running mate, Sarah Palin. Ouch!

In addition, polling from Rasmussen over the past few months has consistently shown that a majority of Americans believe reporters give Democrats more favorable coverage than Republicans. If you didn't already know it: The media's "love affair" with Mr. Obama is no myth.

It stands to reason (outside of the economic mess and Mr. McCain's campaign management issues) that the media has shaped voter perception of the candidates by presenting more positive narratives of Mr. Obama and more negative narratives of Mr. McCain. Factor in that Mr. Obama's television ads are running 5-to-1 to Mr. McCain's and it is no wonder Mr. Obama is leading the race by every measure.

So, now that this bias has been revealed, we can expect the media's moment of self-reflection and assessment, right? An examination of where the media went wrong and how it can right itself on the path to true objectivity. Fat chance.

In contrast, reaction to an Orlando TV anchor's interview of vice presidential candidate Joe Biden is a case in point of what the media does when caught with its hand in the cookie jar - turns against its own. Instead of an introspective analysis, media liberal elites have revolted, bowing to political pressure and campaign spin instead of highlighting excellence in journalism.

Last Thursday, WFTV anchor Barbara West asked Mr. Biden whether he was embarrassed by Mr. Obama's association with ACORN's fraudulent signature gathering. "Come on let's get real," he scoffed. She then (legitimately) asked Mr. Biden why Mr. Obama's "we need to spread the wealth" comment to Joe the Plumber isn't Marxist. To which the campaign had a prime opportunity to explain why it isn't. (In fact, that is the very question I ponder each time the Obama campaign declares it is not socialist, and because no one in the media has yet to challenge the campaign as to why wealth distribution and socialism are not the same.) Mr. Biden angrily responded to the reporter "Are you joking? Is that a real question?" To which Ms. West replied that it was a real question and waited for his response. And when the veteran anchor asked Mr. Biden about his own recent comments declaring a national crisis in Mr. Obama's first six months that would test his mettle, Mr. Biden retorted with condescension: "I don't know who's writing your questions for you." Then the campaign's boycott began. Not only did the Obama campaign cancel the anchor's scheduled interview with Jill Biden and any other potential interviews with the station, but Mr. Biden also called her questions "ugly." In lock-step, left-leaning journalists and blogs attacked.

I have spent the better part of my career and adult life working in the media. Back when I took Journalism 101 - these were the kinds of questions that we were essentially required to ask - and politicians getting a crash course in Media 101 training are supposed to expect. Yet many times a campaign will encourage surrogates to conduct local news interviews because they assume those reporters aren't as well read as national reporters and usually bank on getting softball questions. It's no wonder Mr. Biden walked away bemused with angst. But to rebuke a seasoned journalist for doing her job is beyond self-serving. That the campaign has the "audacity" to penalize the station for challenging Mr. Biden with the same fervency the majority of the media has grilled Sarah Palin is a woefully transparent double-standard (and Mr. Biden is supposed to be the seasoned politician).

A CNN reporter even recently acknowledged to Mrs. Palin that if she had made the "international crisis" remark Mr. Biden had, he would have "never let her get away with it." From his lips to our ears.

For all the media's incessant talk about the Bradley effect and the "6 percent" of racist white people to be blame should Mr. Obama lose the election by a slim margin, there is no talk of what has been routinely raised by conservative pundits (myself included). What percentage of the poll numbers will be attributed to media bias should Mr. McCain lose? Or when will we see an end to media bias in our elections?

We could ask the question, for which there is no probable answer. That would require the media pointing a finger at itself.

Ironically, ACORN and its affiliates, all reliable cheerleaders for higher taxes, are longtime tax deadbeats. A search of public records found more than 200 tax liens adding up to more than $3.7 million are associated with groups that share ACORN’s address on Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans. The most recent lien, in the amount of $23,383, was filed by the IRS against an ACORN affiliate, American Workers Associates Inc., on September 9, 2008.

Will they claim the IRS is racist because they actually demand ACORN pay its fair share of taxes as demanded by law?

Alinsky Nation.

Leftwing political payback

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"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." — Cicero, 106 BC-43 BC